Download Pie for All

Royalty Share says it helps bands get paid by tracking digital music sales through services such as iTunes, Rhapsody, and Napster.

"As labels shift more of their revenue to online outlets, ringtones, traditional downloads, and subscriptions, it brings up a whole bunch of different issues about who gets paid how much and when," according to CEO Bob Kohn, whose locally based MP3 download service eMusic.com was sold in 2001 for $24 million.

When Cheap Trick and the Allman Brothers filed a lawsuit against Sony last year (alleging the label owed royalties for digital sales), Kohn's firm provided the sales data.

"For every 70 cents Sony makes per download on iTunes, the artists were only getting four and a half cents," says Kohn.

Royalty Share's fee for a customizable Web page set up to report online digital sales is 1.5 percent of the revenue processed.